Atheist in a Foxhole
by FunkyWashingMachine
Summary: Mentally fraying in prison, Matt starts to ponder theology
1. Chapter 1

The others told him he was one of the lucky ones. Every world the Galra came near met the same end, and by now, his had met it too. Planet eradicated, species gone, family dead. Like all of theirs. Alive on the ship, they were all the lucky ones.

But he didn't feel lucky, amid all those stories of shattered planets, the dust rising in space, and he hated himself for it. This was what Shiro had died for, for him to curl up sick and broken in an alien prison cell, and still he was impertinent enough to cry. He was a disappointment… but Shiro wasn't here to know that, Shiro wasn't ANYWHERE, nobody was anywhere anymore…

"Yes, we are the lucky ones…"

He'd never been religious, but he was starting to believe in Hell.

Not long ago, he would think about escape. Now he was thinking of it less and less. He couldn't really focus on ANYTHING anymore, his head throbbed constantly, his joints ached, the creatures in the cell said a lot of things but not one of them said it would all be okay.

So he spent a lot of time just worrying the cut with his finger. Sanitary, no. But it couldn't do any worse than the alien pathogens that had been on that blade… his immune system could never have been prepared for them, whatever they were. It wasn't healing well at all…

"Don't touch it, kid," another prisoner said, pulling his hand away. Someone else whispered snidely about the reason the Earth ones went extinct.

But how could they not understand? He had nothing else, not Katie, not his mother or his father, but here, right here, was the last proof in the universe that another human being had ever existed, had stood close to him once…

He used to think about escape. Now he was thinking about the crushing loneliness he was taking in with every breath, and whether it would last forever. He'd always expected to die and turn into nothing, it had never bothered him before, but now that he could quantify the last moment he would spend with another human being, and to think THAT was all there would ever be, slowly the thought unnerved him more and more.

He was starting to understand why man had built its gods the way it did. God was what you needed when you loved something, when you loved something and were faced with a void like this one. Ancient man was not so different from him, ancient man had wanted answers but had no means to get them, so it placed a god in front of the staring void and called it that. He never used to have patience for people who clung to those notions, not when humanity had the tools to look past those paper gods.

But his fever was getting worse and he was singing a spiritual. It was simple, it kept his breathing even, it was familiar, just a tad. He didn't know all of it. Seemed that whoever wrote it must have known a lot about suffering, though.

His cellmates looked on but kept their distance. Like he might turn and bite them at any moment. Then again… he wasn't really sure that wouldn't happen, not when the world was spinning and there was nothing to take hold of.

He closed his eyes and tried not to think about the pain.

"If you get there before I do…"

They all knew he was going to die. No one said it, but you could feel it in the way the air hung quiet, in the way one of them knelt over him, tapped him twice above each eye, murmuring alien syllables that must have been its home planet's last rites.

This was how the Earth would go extinct, its last breathing creature on a prison ship lightyears away, a speck of dust escaped, another curiosity in a menagerie of dying species. Matt Holt, the only human to see this hour, slung in the arms of a creature just as lost, they were two motes that never should have collided, and now he was being given a prayer that didn't belong to him, but who else did this creature have to give it to, was this the honor of Matt Holt, the last human, to go extinct together with this prayer.

And just like that, the notion of dying this lonely became unthinkable. He wished the alien knew a prayer from Earth. He wished HE knew a prayer from Earth.

There was a sound outside and the door slid open. The others all drew back. Something stepped in, the Galra soldier in charge of their block.

It pointed at him.

"Prisoner 117-9873."

He looked up in a daze. The creature next to him retreated to the wall.

"You're coming with me," the warden said, shackling his wrists and pulling him to his feet.

He took a step and fell.

The warden scoffed and picked him up. It was not a gentle thing. But it seemed to not want to break him.

"A 'noteworthy species' that can't even walk…" the warden muttered on the way out. "Not my fucking job…"

Matt was too tired to ask questions. He wasn't thinking of where the warden was bringing him. He was wondering where he would go when he died.


	2. Chapter 2

The room was empty of sound and time. He'd have tried to sing that song again, but his breath was coming short, he couldn't sit up, everything hurt. He had no idea how long he was there alone, he could only hear his heartbeat echoing off the walls, it shook him like a crack in the skull, was it supposed to go that fast, how many were left?

Two hundred and fifty-seven, two hundred and fifty-six…

The door opened, the light was dull but blinding, it skewered him to the back of the head.

"Keep him alive."

And a creature was thrown in. Its silhouette was tall, gangly, and when the light was shut out, Matt could see the gold of its skin. Its last two fingers were long and stretched a membrane out from each elbow like a wing.

It was an angel.

Almost involuntarily, his hand moved to the wound.

"I don't need another guardian angel."

The angel briefly looked him over but didn't respond. It looked so nervous about something.

"Am I going to see Katie?"

It unfolded a small kit he couldn't see well and pinched his wrist between its fingers. What could an angel have to be so worried about?

"Don't worry, Gabriel, it's gonna be okay."

The angel uncurled his arm and stuck him with something.

His father used to say you couldn't help but be changed by space travel. And here he was, on man's oldest and final journey, talking to a messenger of God. His father would have been proud of him. And, Shiro…

He looked down at his hand, gritty with crystalized blood. Shiro had been watching over him for a long time.

"Tell all my friends that I'm coming too…"

When he woke, he was dizzy but didn't feel so much like death itself. The wound on his knee was dressed in something less rudimentary than his own previous attempts. He started to tug at the bandages.

"Shiro…"

A hand stopped him. It was the angel.

"Do you know him?" Matt asked before reaching for the bandage again.

This time the angel swatted him.

"No touch," it said, sounding stern yet tense at the same time.

"But he's my friend, Gabriel."

The angel gave him a cockeyed look, then shook its head and pointed to itself.

"Shaforni."

"Sorry, I don't speak Tongues," Matt said.

"Sick. No talk." Gabriel pushed him back until he was compelled to lie down.

But this was an angel. He wasn't going to not talk to an angel.

"It was nice of you to come be my other friend, Gabriel."

The angel shook its head again.

"Not nice. Patient die, Shaforni die." Then it hid its face. "Bad doctor…"

It must have been something awful that could make an angel cry.

He got it then. This was the angel of death, but it was afraid of doing its job. An angel could have a lot of human inside it.

"Gabriel…" Matt dared to sit up and touch the angel on the arm, "Don't worry, I think you're doing fine. I haven't been scared since you got here."

Gabriel smiled weakly.

"Actually, Gabriel," Matt went on, "I didn't really believe in angels until I met you."

There was no way for him to tell Gabriel how much that meant. He might have been the only one to see something larger than Earth and decide it was God. But angels knew things, didn't they? He didn't have to say it at all.

"Not 'Gabriel,'" the angel said.

Matt thought hard. He didn't know many angels by name. But he didn't want to disappoint another one.

"Michael," he finally said. "Michael with the boat full of souls."

"Shaforni."

The door hissed open and the angel sprung to its feet, immense at full height.

On the other side, the Galra warden pointed.

"You. Report."

The angel bowed its head, hands wringing.

"Not dead. But have... disturb."

The warden gave Matt a perfunctory look.

"Sufficient."

The angel released a breath and offered the warden its wrists. The warden snorted.

"Your obedience is valued. But I'm not here for you."

He pushed past the angel and rounded towards Matt. Matt reached for him with nothing but love.

"There was an angel that fell from Heaven…"

The warden hesitated, stared, then brought Matt's hands behind his back, surprisingly gentle.

And as he was led away, Matt realized he WAS one of the lucky ones, he was in one of Michael's boats on the Jordan, the river Jordan was swift and cold, the river is deep and the river is wide, in the black coldness of outer space, the river was wider than anyone had ever known, milk and honey on the other side, alleluia.

Not everything would be okay. But something would be.

Finally, he knew that, he could feel the hope rising in his soul.

Because he believed in angels.


End file.
